In this red-hot collection from world-champion Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, you’ll find his best, most outrageous tales. Featuring five Bram Stoker Award–winning stories, this career retrospective includes nonfiction forays into drive-in theaters and B-movies, and the novella Bubba Ho-Tep, the basis for the cult-classic motion picture.

The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale

Godzilla’s in a twelve-step program. A soul-sucking Mummy stalks Elvis and John F. Kennedy. Joe Bob Briggs has a moral dilemma: If your girlfriend turns zombie on you, what do you do?

And that’s the tame stuff.

In this red-hot collection from world-champion Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, you’ll find his best, most outrageous stories. The high priest of Texan weirdness does it all: horror, mystery, satire, suspense, and even Westerns. Prepare to be offended, shocked, and cackling like a crazed redneck.

Featuring five Bram Stoker Award–winning stories, this career retrospective contains some of Lansdale’s rarer work, his nonfiction forays into drive-in theaters and B-movies, and the novella Bubba Ho-Tep, later made into a cult-classic major motion picture.

Come on in—the weirdness is fine.

“Always entertaining, champion storyteller Lansdale shares his best weird yarns in this terrific collection…. This is a great introduction to the raunchy, cheerfully unclassifiable East Texan bon vivant.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Let this volume introduce you to his uncensored, unfiltered world. He is a writer deserving of a wide and appreciative audience.”
—The Guardian

“The Best of Joe R. Lansdale is a must-have book for the lover of the weird, the champion of the bizarre, and the fan of the outrageous. If you are looking for a unique experience that will leave you equal parts stunned and nostalgic, frightened and amused, look no further.”
—Fatally Yours

“Whether you are a die-hard Lansdale fan and want to get most of his best work in one volume or you are a neophyte to the Cult of Lansdale looking for a good starting point, this is the book for you.”
—Kent Allard, Dead in the South

“Indisputably one of horror’s most revered craftsmen.”
—Booklist

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Edgar Award–winning Hap and Leonard mystery series (Mucho Mojo, Two Bear Mambo) and the New York Times Notable Book The Bottoms. More than two hundred of his stories have appeared in such outlets as Tales From the Crypt and Pulphouse, and his work has been adapted for The Twilight Zone and Masters of Horror. Lansdale has written several graphic novels, including Batman and Fantastic Four. He is a tenth-degree black belt and the founder of the Shen Chuan martial art.

Praise for Joe R. Lansdale

“A cult figure.”
—People Magazine

“Outrageously funny.”
—Los Angeles Times

“An immense talent.”
—Booklist

“A folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”
— New York Times Book Review

“A terrifically gifted storyteller.”
—Washington Post Book Review

“A zest for storytelling and a gimlet eye for detail.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Lansdale is a storyteller in the Texas tradition of outrageousness…but amped up to about 100,000 watts.”
—Houston Chronicle

“A terrifically gifted storyteller.”
—Washington Post Book Review

“Lansdale’s been hailed, at varying points in his career, as the new Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner-gone-madder, and the last surviving splatterpunk…sanctified in the blood of the walking Western dead and righteously readable.”
—Austin Chronicle

“Like gold standard writers Elmore Leonard and the late Donald Westlake, Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America.”
—Los Angeles Times

“…since I’m not mincing words, let me say that Mr. Lansdale doesn’t mince them either.
That trip from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ (with some interesting stops along the way) is filled with well-wrought characters, black humor, knife-sharp dialogue, and enough violence to make even the most jaded Quentin Tarantino aficionado sit up and smile.”
—Washington Times

“Joe R. Lansdale’s writing swaggers back and forth through a variety of genres, format, and media, blending elements and tones in unconventional ways, but never losing sight of the importance of story and character. His characters feel authentic, his environments are believable, and his plots are gripping. He’s a great storyteller in the most classic American tradition; one gets the sense that if mankind never got around to technology, Lansdale would be roaming the country, regaling campfire crowds…the one thing he cannot write, will not write, is bullshit.”
—The Kind of Face You Hate

Praise for Flaming London, Zeppelins West, and Flaming Zeppelins

“A madcap excursion.”
—Shelf Awareness

“The comparison to Alan Moore’s great comic series is probably the most apt, both in the form of a collection of historic and literary characters and in the tone of Moore’s delight in the obscene. Lansdale ramps both up to hilarious excess.”
—Voyages Extraordinaires

“Lansdale reminds me somewhat of Terry Pratchett, if Pratchett was an irascible cuss with an affection for scatological humour…. If you want your steampunk serious, sombre, or squeaky-clean, stay far away from Lansdale. For myself, he’s a breath of flatulent air in the midst of steampunk taking itself far too seriously.”
—Steampunk Scholar

Praise for Zeppelins West

“Irrepressible, irreverent and unpredictable…. Legends of the Old West, plus characters both real and fictional, enliven the shenanigans…. This novel is one big joyride from start to finish.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Flaming London

“Wait a minute! What’s going on here? Only one of the wildest-alternate-worlds, rip-in-space-time, SF-pastiche romps this side of fifties B-movies.”
—Booklist

Godzilla’s Twelve-Step Program
Bubba Ho-Tep
Mad Dog Summer
Fire Dog
The Big Blow
Duck Hunt
Incident on and off a Mountain Road
The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance
White Mule, Spotted Pig
On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks
Not From Detroit
Cowboy
Steppin’ Out, Summer ’68
Fish Night
Hell Through a Windshield
Night They Missed the Horror Show